Occupy The Internet

Despite the broad popular support for Occupy Wall Street, its art world incarnations have been more hotly contested. Chief among the critiques of Occupy Museums, Occupy 38, and Occupy Internet has been a lack of clearly defined goals; while some of us want to tear down the walls of MoMA, others like our de Koonings well enough to prefer change over demolition. Across the spectrum, artists and critics call out for a single purpose that is objectively worth our energy and attention. One such opportunity has arisen in the dispute between Sotheby’s and the union representing its art-handling staff.

Why is Occupy The Internet now an “exhibition of leading net artists”? Launched two weeks ago at fffff.at, the original project was a simple call: embed a script that runs an army of animated gif protesters on your website to show your support for the Occupation movement. The post asked for animated GIF submissions that would then be “called up for duty”, and has since been installed on over 875 websites.

Now, all those submissions are being replaced with GIFs by artists curator Evan Roth deems worthy of special consideration. This is beyond insulting.